


i'm not gonna let you down (darling, wait and see)

by theyellowumbrella



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types, Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:11:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyellowumbrella/pseuds/theyellowumbrella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You love Laura in a forever kind of way — a never-ending, eternal love that never stops, that never stops going, that pumps the blood through your veins and keeps you breathing kind of way — and the fact that one day you will have to face forever without her kills you (oh, how you wish it could).</p><p>(or: Carmilla's perspective from the Hollstein scene in 2x22)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm not gonna let you down (darling, wait and see)

**Author's Note:**

> All dialogue was taken directly from the episode this is set in (2x22). Everything else came straight from my mouth.
> 
> Had a day off today and I decided to watch Carmilla. Got to this episode and couldn't resist writing the scene from Carm's perspective, so here is the finshed result. Took me all of fifteen minutes to write, but I'm proud-ish of it.

She comes in, her sigh loud and careless and you can just sense the tears in her eyes that are just fresh. Your heart twists at the thought of Laura in such a state — one you’ve been privy to too many times — and you try and stay quiet, try not to disturb her, but of course she speaks to you right away. She always does.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen Laura quite like this, though — utterly broken. You see in her eyes that she has given up hope, see the exhaustion in the way her shoulders sag. She is gone, a shell of the girl she was when you met — all radiant smiles and vibrant eyes. She is changed forever, and the knowledge that it’s your fault kills you. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s not all your fault. Maybe the fact that she is broken and beaten and run down is not all your fault, should not be put on your shoulders, but you know for a fact that you started this downward spiral.

Laura’s always been one to ask questions beyond the realms of her understanding. She’s always been wide-eyed and curious, but you’re usually able to put off her questions until she forgets about them completely. But tonight is different; tonight she is strong, and despite the fact that she is at her breaking point, she isn’t going to let this go.

And she’s right, really. Why not Perry? Why wouldn’t you save her?

(You know the answer just as much as you know that your sole purpose on this earth is to love Laura Hollis: without question).

And when you tell her she’s _yours_ , you don’t mean it possessively. You want it to mean everything to her; want her to understand that this is not about Danny or about Perry or about anybody else, it is about her. She is Laura Hollis — awkward and cheerful, perpetually there — and you are Carmilla Karnstein — socially inept and aloof, perpetually away — and she is _yours_ and you are _hers_ and you want it to matter more than anything else in the world.

When you bring up love again — the one word that can either kill someone or bring them back to life in a flash — you see how her face cracks, right down the middle like it hurts. It hurts you, too, but you don’t say anything because you _can’t_.

She’s crying now, and you wish she would stop so you could put your cold front back up, but Laura is crying and you can feel all of the walls you’re struggling to rebuild crumbling around you.

“You want reasons,” you say, your voice level. “A trail of thoughts and justifications that you can … follow back to somewhere safe. You want the kind of love that clicks; like a key into a lock.”

She nods at you, her eyes brimming with tears and her face torn, and you can feel it building up inside of you: this is the beginning of the end. This must be, because you can feel your heart cracking at this exchange. It thuds against your chest, begging to be released, and you must keep it holed up inside of its cage.

You look at Laura — eyes bleary with her tears and her nose running — and you feel something inside of you stop. It stops running — it stops feeling, breathing, moving. It stops cold in its tracks and you wonder if this is what it’s like to have a piece of you die inside. You wonder, too, if this is the same piece that withered when Elle found out the truth, finally breaking off at this last tug.

You love Laura in a forever kind of way — a never-ending, eternal love that never stops, that never stops going, that pumps the blood through your veins and keeps you breathing kind of way — and the fact that one day you will have to face forever without her kills you (oh, how you wish it could).

“All I know is that in more than a century … you’re the only person I ever found worth saving. You and no one else.”

“It’s not enough,” she tells you, her voice wavering in the middle. She’s right: it’s not enough — _you’re_ not enough — and it ( _you_ ) never will be.

“I know.”

She speaks and you listen — if not just to hear the sound of her voice, smooth like satin and your favourite lullaby — and she’s telling you everything you never and yet always did want to know.

You think about it for a minute: your want — no, your _need_ — to do anything she asks of you. It’s compulsive and always there in the back of your mind, ticking away and slowly eating away at you. She doesn’t even need to ask anymore, because you know when she wants to and when she can’t, and you’re able to do it without command. You hope she’s glad that you’ve come to know her like this, that you know how she might react in any given situation because it means you can help.

The only situations you’re clueless about are the ones you’re involved in.

And so it’s dumb — it’s really, really dumb — but you ask anyway because it is under your skin, gnawing away at you until there’s nothing left:

“Do you miss me?”

You can’t really breathe but you think she understands anyway. You wonder briefly if you must look the way she did earlier: broken, torn apart and empty.

“Like someone cut a hole in me.”

**Author's Note:**

> //title comes from Love, Me by Collin Raye.


End file.
